Research & Collaboration
As a creative researcher and scholar, I embrace mixed methods and a variety of intersectional topics, adeptly employing qualitative, quantitative, and experimental practices. My expertise spans ideation and a variety of techniques, including case studies, survey design, focus groups, interviews, graphics, and data visualization. My publications focus on the impact of convergence—a driving intersectional force comprised of media, technology, and culture. I examine its effects on industry, institutions, and audience/consumer behaviors to identify opportunities, create awareness, and increase understanding. The goal of my work is to offer ethical frameworks, models, and solutions to drive equity and improve lived experiences.
As a communications scholar with a background in education, industry and visual culture, I investigate a broad range of intersectional topics and delivery channels, including the mass communications industry, digital technologies, semiotics, and representations of race and gender. My academic work encompasses strategic and visual communication, education and preparedness, translating research into curricula and educational programs for youth, undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies. In industry, my expertise provides training, coaching, strategies, solutions and advice.
ORI vs. IRI — metrics & Effective KPI ADCOLOR – a premier professional organization dedicated to celebrating and promoting professionals of color and diversity in the creative industries – today unveiled part one of its inaugural study, “ADCOLOR State of the Workplace Study: Retention Outlook Through a DE&I Lens.” The three-part study examines reasons why historically excluded individuals in creative industries plan to leave their employers and reasons why they would stay. In this first segment, “Part One: Analysis of Published Information,” ADCOLOR reviewed over 400 sources within the advertising industry and business to uncover common factors that are combating inclusion and retention. The in-depth analysis, now available on the ADCOLOR website, is one of the most comprehensive reviews of advertising DE&I literature to date.
The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, and Justice (Proctor Institute) is a national center that focuses on issues of leadership, equity, and justice within the context of higher education. It brings together researchers, practitioners and community members to work toward the common goals of diversifying leadership, enhancing equity, and fostering inclusive justice.
Content Creation & Algorithmic Bias — Insecure, Awkward, and #Winning: Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Works of Issa Rae is the first project dedicated exclusively to Issa Rae and her works. Her work offers a fertile space where contemporary issues intersect, encouraging audiences to discuss meaning and impact within their own lives, society, and cultural identities. The text offers analysis informed by Critical Media Studies, Cultural Studies and Intersectionality research. The book features a collection of provocative contributions from scholars from multiple disciplines—including literary, history, and communication.
Insights for Inclusive Engagement Strategy
Advertising Creative: Strategy, Copy, and Design Sixth Edition
gets right to the point of advertising by stressing key principles and practical information students and working professionals can use. Drawing on personal experience as award-winning experts in creative advertising, this new edition offers real-world insights on cutting-edge topics, including global, social media, business-to-business, in-house, and small agency advertising. In the new edition, authors Tom Altstiel, Jean Grow, Dan Augustine, and Joanna L. Jenkins take a deeper dive into the exploration of digital technology and its implications for the industry, as they expose the pervasive changes experienced across the global advertising landscape. Their most important revelation of all is the identification of the three qualities that will define the future leaders of this industry: Be a risk taker. Understand technology. Live for ideas. The latest edition addresses some of the key issues impacting our industry today, such as diversity in the workplace, international advertising, and design in the digital age
A Qualitative Investigation — Recruitment, Retention, and Engagement of a Millennial/Z Workforce: The Millennial/ generation is unique in various ways, particularly with regard to their career aspirations and expectations. Due to their reputation as “job hoppers,” recruiting millennials is not enough. The retention of a Millennial workforce is imperative for organizational success and longevity. This collaboration explores the expectations held by Millennials and the ways in which they differ from those of past generations. It covers a broad range of topics including on-boarding, work/life balance, stress, retention after a crisis, boredom, internships, and how employers can best leverage mobile platforms for increased engagement
Convergence Crisis — The Convergence Crisis reveals the story of the paradigm shift in advertising. Beginning in the early 1840’s with the birth of the first ad agency and momentum spurred by the industrial revolution, this analysis provides a historical overview of significant events and socio-cultural economic factors that have occurred to explain how and why a Convergence Crisis has erupted. Blurring of previously distinct boundaries and the redistribution of power caused by convergence has contributed to new methods of communication in industry and among audiences. The book brings awareness, clarity and understanding to opportunities perceived as crisis.
Black Women & Advertising Ethics — A chapter —within this edited volume of original chapters is the first ever to offer an explicitly womanist view on advertising. Feminists, Feminisms, and Advertising provides analyses of the historical relationships between the advertising industry and the women’s movement in the United States. Contributors consider the ways that advertisers encode race, ethnicity, gender, and heteronormativity into advertising practices and messages exported around the world. They further explore the ways that intersectional audiences such as BIPOC, Latinas, and lesbian and gay audiences decode, reinterpret, resist, and subvert advertising. With this book, the editors and contributors address the present lack of feminist scholarship, research, knowledge, or curriculum in advertising, and begin a more honest dialogue about diversity and intersectional gender.
Apparitions of The Past & Obscured Vision — Stereotypes of Black Women & Advertising during a Paradigm Shift. With the emergence of popular culture phenomena such as reality television, blogging, and social networking sites, it is important to examine the representation of Black women and the potential implications of those images, messages, and roles. Black Women and Popular Culture, provides this comprehensive analysis. Using an array of theoretical frameworks and methodologies, this collection features cutting edge research from scholars interested in the relationship among media, society, perceptions, and Black women. The uniqueness of this book is that it serves as a compilation of “hot topics” including ABC’s Scandal, Beyoncé’s Visual Album, and Oprah’s Instagram page. Other themes have roots in reality television, film, and hip-hop, as well as issues of gender politics, domestic violence, and Colorism.
Design Thinking and Womanism
Research Poster for the RIM conference in Paris France.
Readiness Vs. Preparedness
To Millennials and Boomers these topics mean two completely different things. With 5 generations in the workplace, my previous research is resurfacing and taking on new directions as we explore generational diversity in the workplace.
